


don't know where I'm going

by evewithanapple



Category: Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Song)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 06:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6943948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most of the people who live there now probably never heard about what happened back in the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't know where I'm going

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seekingferret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/gifts).



I remember the summer it happened- the weather so sticky-hot, everyone was holding their breath waiting for a storm to break. It was back in the days of the big neighbourhoods, when everyone would congregate out in the street and pass around potluck dishes and the kids played hopscotch and kick the can up and down the sidewalk. Everybody knew everybody back then, and news always traveled fast. I haven't been to the old neighbourhood in years. Last time I went, the brownstones had all been rented out to college students, and the potlucks had been replaced by keggers. Maybe I could blame Julio and Simon for that, but I doubt it. Most of the people who live there now probably never heard about what happened back in the day.

The two of them were always together; I saw them every day, walking past my front porch on their way to the schoolyard. They'd wave hello to me and I'd wave back, pausing as I sipped my Corona and watched the world go by. Julio was a tiny kid, for all he was almost sixteen- he couldn't have been more than five foot three, and the shaggy hair that flopped in his face made him look even younger. Of course, those were the days when long hair was considered in vogue- that, and mustaches, which poor Julio had no nope of growing- but it made him look less like Leif Garrett and more like a wayward collie. On the other end of the scale, you had Simon, who'd shot up to six feet tall before he even hit his teens. No one looking at Simon would mistake him for a preteen- not with the height, or the hulking shoulders, or the acne scars splattered across his face. Maybe that was why he always seemed to shuffle everywhere, hunched over like it might make him look smaller, holding on to Julio by the belt and letting the little guy take the lead. They were inseparable: if you wanted Simon, Julio was part of the package, and everybody knew it. That was just the way things were.

They were both good kids from nice families, which was why people let things go without comment as long as they did. So what if the two of them were inseparable? So what if the neighbourhood girls despaired of snagging either of them for a date? They weren’t causing anybody any trouble. And so, for once, the gossips bit their tongues and everyone hoped for the best. In the end, it was their own damn foolishness that nearly did them in- but even knowing all the hell they brought down on their own heads, I can’t think too harshly on them. Who wasn’t stupid when they were young and in love?

Everyone knew exactly when it happened, because Simon’s mother went shrieking down the street all the way to the police station and Julio’s father emerged, bellowing, from the family brownstone. It didn’t take a genius to piece together the details, either; the two of them had got caught by the schoolyard basketball courts, up to something they shouldn’t have been (or at least, something they weren’t supposed to get _caught_ doing) and both their parents raised hell. Now, I don’t think I have that bad a relationship with the police- I do my best to avoid them, and for the most part they’ve returned the favour- but I said then and I’ll say now that their reaction was damned stupid. Both boys got hauled in, the chief made a bunch of noise about “public indecency” and “corrupting youth” and blustered like they were both going to get locked up and the key thrown away. Really, it was on him that things got as big as they did- if he’d just talked the parents down off the ledge and let both boys off with a warning to be more discreet next time, it all would have died down in days. But he didn’t, and then someone (no one knows who, because no one was ever willing to claim it) got Father Marsh involved.

Father Marsh was the youngest of the priests at the local Catholic parish, and the kids all loved him- or at least, they were fond of him, even though he seemed hopelessly un-hip. He’d gone into the seminary before he was even old enough to grow a beard, and loved to play Jesus by going around personally handing out bundles of food and tracts to the local ne’er-do-wells. He also joined the pick-up baseball games, and had occasionally been known to dunk a basketball, along with preaching at length about Christ’s message of love and forgiveness. Maybe that was why he got involved. But however he got pulled into the whole thing, he probably threw the biggest load of gasoline on the fire: he called in the press.

Newspapers descended. TV news crews followed. I’ll say this for Father Marsh, he knew exactly what kind of game he was playing: pictures of Julio and Simon (especially Julio, with his best kicked-puppy face) on the front page accompanied by passionate speeches about intolerance and love and how these young boys’ lives were about to be ruined for the simple crime of expressing affection. He was smart enough to pick his representatives wisely, and to dress them up nice: when Leonard Matlovich and Frank Kameny showed up to speak on their behalf, they were both wearing suits and ties. When Julio and Simon spoke for themselves, they were steered away from politics: the big Newsweek article described Julio as “shyly describing his ambition to serve his country in the Marines” (which was news to me, but then I wasn’t the one directing the interview) and enthused about Simon’s “talent for woodworking.” The cover photo they chose- Simon and Julio in black and white, eyes wide, staring anxiously into the camera- was just the icing on the article’s cake. Nobody was on the police’s side by then, and they damn well knew it.

So out they went- Julio to his aunt’s house (his aunt and his mother hadn’t spoken to each other in ten years, and I imagine she was more than happy to take him in and thumb her nose at her sister in the process) and Simon, after a few months of bouncing from household to household, joining Julio. No one really spoke of the whole affair once it was over; there were vague references to "all the fuss" when it came up, but most of us had gotten along fine before the news showed up on our doorstep, and we continued on after they'd left. Sure, there were some strained relations, mostly between Simon and Julio's families (naturally, each one blamed the other for "leading their son astray") but the desire to get along eventually conquered the desire to make a scene. I heard through the grapevine that the boys eventually started having Sunday dinner at Simon's parents' house; a few years after the whole thing died down and they were old enough for college, they headed off to CUNY on twin scholarships, still attached at the hip. Last I heard, they were living together in the Bronx; a few years ago, a reporter tracked them down for a retrospective, and wrote about their pet spaniels and Simon's tulip garden. She described them as "beloved neighbourhood grandfathers;" that made me smile. 

And as for me? I moved out of the old neighbourhood in ninety-two, once most of my friends had either moved away or died. I have an apartment now, and while I nod to my neighbours as I pass them in the halls, I can't say that I know any of them all that well. Perhaps the time for that has passed, and neighboudhoods like the one I lived in then don't exist any longer. I could be wrong, though. I hope so. I haven't visited Julio and Simon in person, but the picture in the retrospective article is pasted up over my mantel: the two of them sitting on their front stoop, surrounded by beaming children. There are pockets of community here and there, wherever people have been willing to plant the seeds. It looks to me like Julio and Simon have carried it with them all these years.


End file.
